I don't agree with any of the cons mentioned here except it being too short (that's the justification of me posting to this thread lol) This small demo of the upcoming game is pretty much treading to the only direction possible where some novelty can be introduced to the series, while delivering the familiar Silent Hill atmosphere even without bluntly exploiting the Silent Hill trademarks.

I can't understand the moaning about jump-scares either. I mean yeah, of course it's cheap when your horror movie/game is based on jump-scare after another thrown at the viewer, however I think that when you combine a well-built atmosphere with just the right amount of high-quality jump-scares, you're having a pretty solid formula for a scary game.

While the final product won't be same as P.T., they clearly won't change it too much as they can see that this style and direction works so well for most of the audience. I personally predict that the game will be in 1st person while you're inside buildings and 3rd person in (at least most) outside areas.

While I totally understand that the game and the obscure clues are difficult on purpose to keep the reveal from coming out too soon, and to encourage online world collaboration. Indeed the demo can be a point of frustration for those playing it without the aid of a walkthrough.

So I believe that those who spent the time on it and completed it should've at least been given some token of recognition in the form of a trophy. This would've also gotten more people involved to download the demo.

The only real negative point about the teaser in my opinion is that I was occassionally at a loss on how to progress further in the story. Some of these things seemed a little too random almost as if it relied on the curiosity of the player to look around carefully. I wouldn't be suprised if there were more than a few didn't have as much patience and quit out of frustration after they ran around in endless circles or back and forth between doors...

I don't really have any gripes about it. It's a little confusing as to what to do at times, but since this is intentional I can't complain. I also don't understand why folks complain about how things aren't "silent hill," when it's purposely designed that way. That complaint kind of annoys me, because people are always complaining about how the games need more creativity, stop following the same formula, yet when something un-silent hill like occurs, people bitch.

1. Repeated scares. At times it starts to feel like a haunted house at a fair with animatronics and sound clips set up to scare you. My favorite scares in the game are the ones that only happen once, like bathroom girl or balcony lady. Perhaps the haunting a could be spaced out a little more so you're not so aware you're listening to the same sound clip again. The sink baby loses its shock appeal once it can reliably be found In the same place at any time.

(That said, previous games were much worse at this, you're supposed to be reliving the same minute before midnight over and over and the constant inevitable hauntings ups the feeling of dread.)

2. Difficulty and arbitrariness of puzzles. Though again this is kind of par for the course in Silent Hill, but hopefully this was just part of kojima's planned community effort to figure it out.

3. The typeface on "gouge it out". What were they thinking? Might as well be comic sans. Use real handwriting next time.

Other than that, loved it. Feels like having Team Silent back again. It's gonna be a loooong wait.

What bothers me is not so much as game mechanics ( will wait for final product /walkthrough)before deciding if i like it, but this game will probably add a lot to the canon story and i quite fear that.

I hope not. Personally I don't care at all about silent hill 'canon', Silent 2 and 4 don't mention alessa or the cult and I think they're better for it. I feel like the town is a subjective thing that is different for every person who experiences it. 1 and 3 are great but I think they get bogged down in explaining too much. Some things are creepier left unsaid. And someone should have thought about that before they made those horrible movies.

Just to speak to the point about the canon--I feel like a little bit of cult canonicity would be a good thing at this point. The series has gone too far in the "subjective reality" direction and I think the town needs some grounding, so to speak. Murphy's Silent Hill was all over the place and I found it unrelatable and cartoony. Incorporating the cult, even subtly, will maybe reign that back a bit? I don't know. I just don't want to see anymore giant clocks or infinite water slides.

As for PT, I have no complaints, considering the teaser was meant to simply grab people's attention. It's a PR stunt and I doubt it's indicative of the final product. If anything it was Kojami trying to put to rest people's fears that he would be unable to create a compelling, atmospheric horror game. And judging by the general response, he proved himself capable.

Although--if I have one gripe, it's the eye gouging scene. The "squish" noise and animation just looked and sounded silly to me. Cartoonish, even. And as Reverend stated, the typeface was atrocious. Took me out of the moment, certainly.

The most disappointing thing in the teaser, to me, was the creature design. She was scary, but in a Paranormal Activity kind of way, not a Heironimus Bosch kind of way. Her behaviors were a checklist of standard horror tropes: rapidly shaking head (at the window), standing in the hallway and then gone when the lights flicker, slamming the door shut, and the jump scare. I was seriously expecting another encounter where she would be sobbing with her back turned, and then whip around with a scary face.

Compare that to the kind of tension in Lakeview Apartments. The radio starts to crackle, and up ahead there is this perfectly still silhouette, roughly x-shaped, made of shiny plastic legs. James gets close to it, and it shudders to life. To the player, it's threatening but also kind of pitiful, like we're doing it a favor by beating it to death with a plank of wood. Previously, we saw the same creature being violated and tossed around by the red pyramid thing. It can hurt James, but it projects a feeling of vulnerability and shame on top of just being creepy. The subtle way it shuffles around and awkwardly tries to hit James evokes humiliation, desperation, mindlessness, and a bunch of other "colors" beyond RARRR IMA SPOOKY GHOST.

I hope the final game has monsters that operate on multiple levels like that. It's easy to rely on guaranteed thrills, and P.T. is definitely effective in that way, but so much more is possible.

I agree about the wife design her jump scares did not have much effect. But you are forgetting about the creature design of the fetus it's even more pitiful, grotesque and realistic than "shiny plastic legs" of SH2. It also projects the feeling of vulnerability and shame on top of just being creepy for being part his family and being his fault. There's something else that reflects SH2, the creature standing in the hallway it behaves differently from the wife like on SH2 when Pyramid Head stares from a distance and then disappear.

- I hate having to keep R3 or L3 pressed, especially if you expect me to move them around at the same time. Just ... no.

- That final puzzle. Still haven' t gotten past it, even after reading every update as to what worked for X or Y. I can' t shake the feeling maybe I should have collected the photo pieces earlier or something, the game autosaved without even warning me and won' t do so again. I hate autosaves with a passion.

Putting that aside I liked it. It genuinely creeped me up in ways no game ever did. I wouldn' t want the whole game to be first person, nor to be flight or flight rather than flight or fight, but I' m not allergic to it either. Just use the right tool at the right time. And in this specific case both were fitting.

Huknar wrote:

Am I the only one that didn't take that as content for the actual game (let alone the Silent Hill title that is UNRELATED to this.), but rather a clever way to give the pains the series has faced a voice? It is obviously either Silent Hill as a series, or survival horror talking.

I certainly suspected it to be a meta thing. At the very least I think we can all agree that it was a "fuck you conservatism" speech.

I agree about the wife design her jump scares did not have much effect. But you are forgetting about the creature design of the fetus it's even more pitiful, grotesque and realistic than "shiny plastic legs" of SH2. It also projects the feeling of vulnerability and shame on top of just being creepy for being part his family and being his fault. There's something else that reflects SH2, the creature standing in the hallway it behaves differently from the wife like on SH2 when Pyramid Head stares from a distance and then disappear.

I honestly found the fetus kind of funny. I dunno, I just thought the mouth was silly looking, and the fact that they used a generic sample of a baby crying ruined it for me. At least David Lynch understood that something so deformed wouldn't sound anything like a human baby.

On that topic, I think an even worse offender is the schlocky sound effects of the woman getting mutilated when you look through the peephole. Team Silent wisely chose not to show the unedited version of James smothering Mary. Having everything clear-as-a-bell just makes me think of some actress getting paid to make gurgling noises in front of a microphone.

In the case of SH 2, you don't hear Mary as she's getting killed,you actually see James killing her, while in the PT demo, you don't see the women dying, you hear it. How else could they convey her dying? Or should the scene in PT have been omitted entirely?

I thought the baby was unsettling. It also reminded me of Eraserhead. Perhaps the baby was intended to sound 'normal' to add up to some kind of cognitive dissonance? You heard a baby cry before you saw what it actually looked like, IIRC.

In the case of SH 2, you don't hear Mary as she's getting killed,you actually see James killing her, while in the PT demo, you don't see the women dying, you hear it. How else could they convey her dying? Or should the scene in PT have been omitted entirely?

In SH2, the image isn't clear when James does it either. It rapidly flickers in and out of view, and gradually becomes overwhelmed by static, the source of the radio noise throughout the game. Perfectly handled, in my opinion. I think the PT scene should have been replaced with something similar, a combination of indistinct shapes and noises barely glimpsed through the peephole, or yeah, just removed altogether.

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I thought the baby was unsettling. It also reminded me of Eraserhead. Perhaps the baby was intended to sound 'normal' to add up to some kind of cognitive dissonance? You heard a baby cry before you saw what it actually looked like, IIRC.

True. And I gotta say, the sound of the baby in distress that seemed to be coming from the bloody trunk hanging in the hallway was pretty unnerving.

I see what you're saying about the peephole. It would have benefited the scene if they left the sounds more ambiguous. And the way the voice said "You know what to do" made me laugh. The Mary scene in SH2 wasn't entirely ambiguous from a visual standpoint. Mostly ambiguous though.

But I have an idea of what the devs were trying to go for with the peephole. With the grisly sound effect an not exactly being able to see it one might think, "did it really happen?", "is this really happening?" and "could I be next?" I think it was intended to build tension, uncertainty, and anxiety.

There are some over the top moments sound-wise that could be a little more subtle. The peephole, the laughing when you solve the hello puzzle, even the baby crying. I would also hope the scares are a little more spread out in the real game, as it starts to feel like a haunted house ride. I want to have stretches of silence where nothing dramatic happens, so it's all the scarier when it does. I understand that this is a limited tech demo with only one environment and they wanted to show off what could be done, so I think it will be fine.

Also it takes you out of it when you hear a sound clip that's exactly the same as last time, so I hope they record more variations of each sound. Same kind of goes for the repeated ghost attacks.

I love the things that are randomized to be different each playthrough and I hope some scares don't happen every time or happen in different places. This could add a lot of replay value and fear factor as well.